The transformative power of bringing our full humanity into leadership takes center stage in this profound conversation with Nicholas Janni, award-winning author of "Leader as Healer." Nicholas shares his extraordinary journey from studying with master drummers in West Africa to becoming a transformational coach for corporate executives worldwide.
What unfolds is a deeply moving exploration of how our personal wounds can become our greatest gifts. Nicholas vulnerably recounts his complex relationship with his Jewish-Italian father who fled fascism, revealing how this intergenerational trauma initially created disconnection before ultimately leading to profound healing. This personal journey now informs his revolutionary work with leaders, helping them access deeper levels of presence and authenticity.
The conversation illuminates Nicholas's unique ability to bridge seemingly disparate worlds—bringing embodied awareness and emotional intelligence into corporate environments traditionally dominated by cognitive approaches. His insightful metaphor of "reinserting the USB" into our bodies, emotions, and intuition speaks to how we've normalized living in a diminished version of reality. For leaders navigating today's radical uncertainty, this reconnection isn't merely beneficial—it's essential.
Nicholas's approach combines fierce truth-telling with profound compassion, creating safe spaces where executives can access vulnerability without judgment. His transformational coaching programs help consultants and leaders move beyond intellectual understanding to embodied knowing, literally "recoding" their nervous systems to access greater wholeness.
Whether you're a leader seeking greater authenticity, a coach working with executives, or someone navigating your own healing journey, this conversation offers profound insights into slaying your dragons with compassion. As Nicholas demonstrates through his own vulnerability around feelings of worthlessness, our core challenges never fully disappear—we simply work with them at deeper levels, transforming them from obstacles into sources of wisdom and connection.
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Presenter
Malcolm Stern has worked as a group and individual psychotherapist for more than 30 years. He was a co-founder of Alternatives at St James’s Church in London and runs groups internationally.
He is the author of Falling in Love / Staying in Love (Piatkus 2004) and Slay Your Dragons with Compassion ( Watkins 2020). He co-presented Channel 4’s relationship series, ‘Made for Each Other’ in 2003 and 2004 and sailed on the ‘Rainbow Warrior’ with Greenpeace in the 1980s. The book he is currently writing is an exploration of the shadow and its necessity in our evolutionary development.
To become equal to the dream sewn within us, our heart must break open and usually must break more than once. That’s why they say that the only heart worth having is a broken heart. For only in breaking can it open fully and reveal what is hidden within.” – Michael Meade
This is a series of podcasts based on the premise explored in Malcolm Stern’s acclaimed book of the same name, that adversity provides us with the capacity to develop previously unexplored depths and is , in effect , a crucible for self reflection and awareness. Malcolm lost his daughter Melissa to suicide in 2014. It slowly dawned on him over the following few years that he was being educated and an opportunity was being presented where new insights helped him forge a path through his grief and despair. As part of that cathartic journey, he wrote “ Slay Your Dragons with Compassion ( Watkins 2020 ) where he was able to describe some of the practices that had helped him shed light on a way through the darkness.
